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Workshop on Non-intrusive Load Monitoring is a Success

Article Posted On 5/21/2012

The First International Workshop on Non-intrusive Load Monitoring (NILM) at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) was a success. Held on May 7, 2012, and co-chaired by CMU Civil and Environmental Engineering Professor Mario Berges, the workshop coincided with the annual Pennsylvania Smart Infrastructure Incubator conference.

NILM is the name given to a set of techniques used to obtain estimates of the electrical consumption of individual appliances from measurements of voltage and/or current taken at a limited number of locations of the power distribution system in a building.

The mission of this workshop was to create a forum to unite researchers working internationally on the topic of energy disaggregation. The workshop was held to address the fact that there are currently no specialized conferences or workshops dedicated to this topic, and the contributions come from researchers in a wide variety of fields and from different backgrounds.

"By all measures, the resulting event exceeded our expectations," Berges reports. "NILM research is alive and well in 2012, almost thirty years after its conception."

Speakers included Michael Zeifman from the Fraunhofer Center for Sustainable Energy Systems (CSE), co-organzers Berges and Zico Kolter from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stephan Tomek from iHomeLab, Sean Lai from Samsung, Sidhant Gupta from the University of Washington, Kevin Ashton from Belkin International, Hampden Kuhns from LoadIQ, Oliver Parson from the University of Southampton, James Garrett and Kyle Anderson from CMU, as well as industry participants from PlotWatt, Verlitics/Emme, and Bidgely.

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